Dame Susan Hill, Lady Wells, DBE (born 5 February 1942) is an English author of fiction and non-fiction works.  Her novels include The Woman in Black, The Mist in the Mirror, and I'm the King of the Castle, for which she received the Somerset Maugham Award in 1971.  Hill was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.  Her home town was later referred to in her novel A Change for the Better (1969) and in some short stories like Cockles and Mussels.  Her first novel, The Enclosure, was published by Hutchinson.   Her next novel Gentleman and Ladies was published in 1968 and was runner-up for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.  This was followed in quick succession by A Change for the Better, I'm the King of the Castle, The Albatross and other stories, Strange Meeting, The Bird of Night, A Bit of Singing and Dancing and In the Springtime of the Year, all written and published between 1968 and 1974.  She relies on suspense and atmosphere, similar to the classic ghost stories by Montague Rhodes James and Daphne du Maurier.  She wrote a sequel to du Maurier's Rebecca entitled Mrs de Winter in 1993.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Hill 

loqu-, -loquence, -loquent, -loquently, -loquy, -iloquent, -iloquently  (Latin:  talk, speak, say)  This loqu unit is directly related to the "talk, speak, say, word, speech" locu- family unit.  Adversus solem ne loquitor.  "Don't speak against the sun."  Also translated as, "Don't waste your time arguing the obvious."  When confronted by an important, irrefutable fact, there is no point in arguing about it any further.  Link to over 100 words using Latin for talk at https://wordinfo.info/unit/2533 

Flax grows in most places, but it thrives where river deposits replenish the soil every year:  the Rhine, the Scheldt and the Meuse, in Holland and Belgium; the Nile valley, with its annual overflow to feed the flax fields of Egypt; and the Oder, the Neman, the Vistula and the Dvina, enriching the soils of the Baltic lands, which until the mid-19th century traditionally supplied most of the flax spinning wheels of Europe.  As it grows, flax is the color of sand on a cloudy day, and it has pale-blue flowers, like distant mountains.  It is so long and thin that it seems to almost have the nature of thread already.  But, unlike cotton (which is pretty much ready for spinning after you remove a few seeds and card it), silk (which often just needs to be reeled and twisted), or wool, which needs to be cleaned and combed but is also essentially itself, for a flax crop to be ready even for basic spinning, some hard work has to happen.  Flax is never cut:  it’s always pulled.  This means that the full length is preserved, root and all.  Then it is gathered into bundles, or “beets,” and dried (in the sun if possible, in barns if not), after which the seeds are removed in a process called rippling.  Victoria Finlay  https://lithub.com/on-the-ancient-mysteries-of-linen/ 

Thomas Perry (born 1947) is an American mystery and thriller novelist.  He received a 1983 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel.  Perry's work has covered a variety of fictional suspense starting with The Butcher's Boy, which received a 1983 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel, followed by Metzger's Dog, Big Fish, Island, and Sleeping Dogs.  He then launched the critically acclaimed Jane Whitefield series:  Vanishing Act (chosen as one of the "100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century" by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association), Dance for the Dead, Shadow Woman, The Face Changers, Blood Money, Runner, and Poison Flower.  Perry developed a non-series list of mysteries with Death Benefits, Pursuit (which won a Gumshoe Award in 2002), Dead Aim, Night Life, Fidelity, and Strip.  The New York Times selected Night Life for its best seller selection.  In The Informant, released in 2011, Perry brought back the hit-man character first introduced in The Butcher's Boy and later the protagonist in Sleeping Dogs. The Informant was awarded the 2012 Barry Award for Best Thriller.  Eddie's Boy received the 2021 Barry Award for Best Thriller.  In 2021, Vanishing Act was included in Parade's list of "101 Best Mystery Books of All Time".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Perry_(author)  The Old Man is an American thriller television series based on the 2017 novel of the same name by Thomas Perry.  It was developed by Jonathan E. Steinberg and Robert Levine and premiered on FX on June 16, 2022.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Man_(TV_series) 

Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem (Latin for 'argument to the person'), refers to several types of arguments, some but not all of which are fallacious.  Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.  Ad hominem arguments were first studied in ancient Greece.  John Locke revived the examination of ad hominem arguments in the 17th century.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem 

Dry embossing, also called relief embossing, is done by tracing a stencil with a special tool called a stylus.  The result is a raised pattern on the object you are embossing.  This project is easy, even if you're new to embossing.  And it's fairly quick, as long as you select a relatively simple stencil.  Hand embossing is ideal only for small projects, such as a greeting card or place cards for a single table setting.  Sherri Osborn   https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/dry-embossing-1251183 

jink  verb  1715, "move nimbly; wheel or fling about in dancing," a Scottish word of unknown origin.  It also came to mean "elude, dodge" (1774); "to trick, cheat" (1785).  As a noun, "act of eluding" (1786).  For high jinks, see hijinks, the date of which suggests this word is older than the record.  https://www.etymonline.com/word/hijinks 

The 2022 Booker Prize Longlist has been announced!  Chosen from 169 novels, this year’s longlist is comprised of 13 novels that span the globe and the decades, and features the youngest and oldest authors ever to be recognized in the award’s history.  The author of Nightcrawling, Leila Mottley is 20 years old and Alan Garner, author of Treacle Walker, is 87 years old.  Other highlights of this year’s longlist include three debut novelists—Maddie Mortimer, Leila Mottley, and Selby Wynn Schwartz—and two new independent presses that seem to dominate this year’s selecton, Influx Press and Sort of Books.  And at 116 pages, Small Things Like These by Irish writer Clare Keegan is the shortest book listed in the prize’s history.  First awarded in 1969, the Booker Prize is open to writers of any nationality writing in English and published in the UK or Ireland.  The shortlist will be announced September 6th and the winner will be announced in a ceremony held in London on October 17^th, 2022.  Pierce Alquist  https://bookriot.com/2022-booker-prize-longlist/

 http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2545  July 29, 2022